Real Estate Marketing - Put Your Free Report on Steroids

Real Estate Marketing - Put Your Free Report on Steroids

by Brandon Cornett

It's getting harder and harder for real estate agents to generate business online. But those agents who put forth a little extra effort can overcome this fact, and reap the rewards of a highly successful web presence.

In this article, I'll offer some tips and strategies you can use to generate more leads and attract more clients from your real estate website. Specifically, we will look at the so-called "free report" of yesteryear that has died a slow and painful death. Then, we will look at ways you can resurrect this concept in new and effective ways.

In other words, I will explain how real estate agents can put their free reports on steroids, metaphorically speaking.

The Challenge of Real Estate Marketing Online There are a lot more agent websites online these days, so the consumer who is researching real estate in his or her area will often become inundated with competing websites. This level of information overload makes it harder for the individual real estate agent to establish an effective web presence. It makes it harder, mind you, but not impossible.

One of the most common "marketing" strategies you find on these agent websites is the free report. This is a strategy that worked well in the past, but does not work so well anymore -- at least, not the way most agents employ the strategy. Many of the so-called "reports" I encounter online are poorly positioned in several ways:

First of all, the report will consist of information the web visitor can easily find elsewhere online. For example, "Top 10 Tips for Buying a Home" is so worn out and over-used that it's practically invisible to the modern consumer. Yet, real estate agents continue to "promote" these items.

Here's what it all boils down to. Who is going to offer their email address in exchange for a generic article they can find on thousands of other websites? Consumers are web-savvy these days, and they know how to ignore useless information and find the good stuff.

On top of this, most agents who employ this strategy fail to give it any visual punch. People want what they can see, so a graphical representation of a free report will almost always outperform a textual description of that same report. Yet I rarely see agent create enticing artwork for their reports.

This strategy in its original form no longer works. But you can resurrect the concept behind the strategy in new and exciting ways. Here's one way to go about it.

Injecting Your Free Report With Steroids

So let's say you took the "free report" concept and injected it with steroids and other performance-enhancing substances. Let's say you created an actual e-booklet, in PDF format, that was all about the local real estate scene in your area. Specific, factual and relevant. Suddenly, the booklet becomes something that people cannot find anywhere else, thus the perceived value of the item increases. But we're not done yet.

Other Performance-Enhancing Ingredients

Now let's take this concept even further and hire a graphic designer to create a "virtual cover" for the booklet -- one that you can use to promote it on your website. People believe in what they see, so sometimes a little visual entice is all it takes to get people to starting filling out those web forms.

But we're still not done yet. Let's create a press release and distribute it online to announce this insightful new guide to the real estate scene in [your town] ... jam-packed with recent sales statistics, development news, residential reports and more. A must-read for anyone planning to buy a home in [your town].

I've shared enough. You get the idea. But suffice to say these are only steps 1 through 7 of about 15 steps I would take, if I were serious about generating leads through my real estate website. I offer these kinds of ideas and strategies all the time, but very few people implement them. And do you want to know why?

Because nobody ever said lead generation was easy!

Those who put in the extra effort will reap the extra rewards. And those who keep peddling their "Top Ten Tips for Buying a Home" will probably find another line of work at some point.